White Dragon
by ncfan
Summary: What makes Ishida Uryuu who he is.


**Characters**: Uryuu, Sayuri (OC), Ryuuken, Soken, Isshin, Ichigo**  
Summary**: What makes Ishida Uryuu who he is.**  
Pairings**: None**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: None**  
Timeline**: Pre-manga to present**  
Author's Note**: References events in _One Reason, Islands in the Sea, Moments of Dysfunction _and _Mea Culpa._**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

**he never cries**

Staring down at the face of her sleeping son, Ishida Sayuri can already see that he will look like her. He is so very young—only two months—but she knows that there is little of his father in Uryuu's face. He has her dark hair, fine fuzz on the crown of his skull. His dark blue eyes will stay that same shade from infancy, just as hers did, and he will retain the starkly white skin he has now, just as she has.

Pregnancy robbed Sayuri of her already delicate health, though she has more or less recovered—she's had two months after all, and in Sayuri's mind, that's more than enough. _It is enough_, she thinks, that she has lived through it, and that she and her son both have survived to tell the tale.

Sayuri cradles the infant in her arms against her chest, sitting in the living room and waiting for Ryuuken to come home from work; paternity leave has long since ended. She flicks her eyes briefly out the window and sees ice crystallizing on the pane. Uryuu stirs but makes not a sound. Sayuri tips her head downwards slightly, bangs falling over her eyes as she frowns involuntarily.

She should be so relieved. From listening to her own mother talk when she was a child, one would have thought that Yukimura Yuugao didn't sleep at all for the first six months after Sayuri's brother Yuya was born.

But it does bother Sayuri just a little bit, that Uryuu never cries.

**warrior or pacifist? –one month later**

Ryuuken's lips curl up in a rare smile as Uryuu contorts slightly in his sleep. Sayuri's passed out on the bed in the next room, exhausted after a long day; Ryuuken has no intention of depriving her of her right to sleep. She says she's better, but she still looks pale and weak and Ryuuken knows he's probably just subconsciously accentuating the negative again, but he can't help but worry about her health, just a little bit.

In moments like this, Ryuuken is actually able to think. While he is hardly going to complain when he can hear Sayuri talking, he's always had an easier time thinking in silence.

Every parent, Ryuuken supposes, wonders how their child or children will end up. If Uryuu does end up following the path of a Quincy—Ryuuken still entertains ambivalence towards that life, instead of coming to genuinely hate it as he later will—how far will he take it?

Sayuri is a fighter; always has been, though for her relatively good-natured personality, few would believe it. Ryuuken is far less eager to throw himself into the line of fire.

If Uryuu does end up getting sucked into that life, how far will he go?

**mercy of oblivion –eleven months later**

"_Please _don't help." Isshin winces but doesn't retract the words as he hands Uryuu over to his grandfather and whisks away from Soken to attend to his newly widowed friend.

Soken is naturally offended, but he understands, and lets it drop, allowing Isshin to do the heavy lifting. He knows that Isshin looks at his son in much the way one would look at a younger sibling who is grown and old enough to take care of himself. Brothers who regularly get on each other's nerves, and almost constantly snark at each other and bicker and trade biting insults, but brothers who care, all the same.

And Soken knows, that someone has to look after Uryuu, now.

Just a little over a year old, Uryuu smiles heartbreakingly up at his grandfather as Soken sits down, child wrapped securely in his arms, in the nearest chair; he's past sixty and can't carry weight as easily as he used to. Uryuu hasn't yet begun to speak but he seems so very aware, and that smile tears at Soken's heart because it's identical to the smile Ryuuken had worn as an infant and a child.

Soken has always been fond of children, regrets that he and his wife, while she was still alive, couldn't have more, and all but raised his much-younger brother himself (For all the good it did the poor boy, dead at twenty-two). He can remember what happened to Ryuuken sixteen years ago when his mother died, watched him grow somber and reserved and unsmiling, except when around his few friends, and, of course, Sayuri, and can't help but think that he failed somewhere. Ryuuken softened as he grew, but there will be no healing from this.

As he presses a gnarled hand against the soft curve of his grandson's back, Soken sighs wearily and casts a heavy-eyed look out the window, searing the ice and snow. Uryuu is too young to understand. Soken thanks God, that Uryuu is too young to understand that his mother will never come home.

Maybe it's a mercy, that Uryuu will never remember, never know. Ryuuken will never forget.

**introduction to mortality –two years later**

Uryuu can't recall ever being in a hospital before. He knows, of course, that he was born in once, but can't remember it. That was when Mother was still alive, and he can't remember any of the days in which Mother still lived, and certainly not the night he was born.

Father's been hurt. The awful, cleaning fluid-like smell rises in Uryuu's nostrils, as the reality of mortality washes over his frail, fluted bones and makes him cold, even nestled under crisp linen sheets and huddled in the crook of his father's arm.

Father is just a little intimidating. He's a figure of awe to his three-year-old son, tall, distant, remote, removed. He never seems all there, as though his mind and his heart is not with his son. But Uryuu has never so much as contemplated a life without his father. Now, the idea and the reality looms over him, overwhelming like the dust in an attic, as plain as the silver gilt gathering quietly in his father's brown hair.

One day, his father will die.

"Father?" Uryuu is whispering and Father, having begun to drift off into light sleep, can't hear him. Uryuu's trembling voice rises a little bit, faltering all the time. "Father?"

Brown eyes finally open, and the mumble is heard, indistinct and hazy. "What is it?"

Silver moonlight filters through the cracks in the plastic, dust-laden blinds, casting ivory jail stripes across the bed, and golden light from the hall outside seeps under the door (footfalls outside crashes against cool linoleum), so the darkness isn't absolute. "Are you… Are you going to die?" Uryuu whispers tremulously.

Still half-asleep, not entirely aware, Father answers, "We all die."

Uryuu spends the restless night listening to his father breathe, clutching his shirt desperately in one hand, as if his meager strength is enough to keep him from floating away.

**don't answer when he asks that –one year and five months later**

The first time Uryuu asks his father why he hates being a Quincy so much, he is four years old and nursing bandaged hands. He's still cringing from the icy blasts of his father's anger, and can barely work up the courage to ask.

Ryuuken's reaction is immediate. Perhaps more harshly than he intends, he snaps, "Don't _ever_ ask me that!"

Uryuu bows his head to hide his reddening face and shaken eyes.

**you look just like her –eleven months later**

The frame is heavy in Uryuu's small hands, but he grips on to the wood with a strange, hungry eagerness, curiosity that forms a tightening in his chest and throat as he drinks in the sight. The woman in the picture smiles brightly with her teeth, her slightly arched shoulders clad in white.

Uryuu has three wishes when he looks at the picture of his mother.

He wishes he could put a name to that face.

He wishes he could put a voice to that face.

He wishes he could remember anything at all, and not just see a flat, two-dimensional face.

Uryuu feels his father's hand, cold and heavy as lead, on his shoulder, and flinches. He doesn't look up as his father, with a strangely soft voice, murmurs, "You look just like her, you know." It's the first time Ryuuken has so much as mentioned Uryuu's mother in his presence.

Uryuu knows that. He knows that much.

**tell me about my mother –six hours later**

"What was she like?"

Ryuuken and Soken have the same color eyes, and Uryuu marvels that two sets of brown eyes can be so different, one so hard and the other so soft. Sitting on the stoop of Soken's small house after training, Soken looks at him in surprise, setting his soup bowl down on the concrete steps of the stoop. "Who do you mean, child?"

Uryuu's blue eyes shine, unnaturally bright, from behind his glasses. He doesn't smile. "My mother."

The sunlight sears on their backs, despite seeming so deceptively mild, and the sad glaze that comes over Soken's face all but assures Uryuu that he'll have to fight for even the smallest bit of information. "Your father," Soken tells him quietly, "would be far better suited to this."

Uryuu bites his lip, wondering if he should tell him. Finally, he whispers, shamefaced, "I'm afraid to ask him."

Soken silently runs a hand down the back of Uryuu's head, sadder than before. "Uryuu, I don't think—"

"_Please_, Sensei!" Uryuu pleads with him. "I don't know anything about her. I don't even know Mother's name."

"Your mother's name was Sayuri." Soken suddenly looks far older than his sixty-five years. "And I'll tell you more when you're older."

**shy and held apart –four months later**

Uryuu's first day of school is a lonely experience, as is every other day of school.

He doesn't make friends. He can't; he's too shy and too withdrawn to talk to anyone, and no one notices him anyway. Having been born late in the year, he's nearly a year older than most of his classmates, and that doesn't help. Uryuu says not a word in class, ever, except to answer roll call.

For all his loneliness, it's a bit of a relief to be invisible, and Uryuu continues to work to remain unnoticed.

**no way to live –eight months later**

"Father?" Uryuu can't manage not to croak out the words. It's all he can do not to start crying. "Why do you hate being a Quincy so much?"

Uryuu vividly remember the last time he asked, and instinctively flinches, expecting to see his father grow angry again. But Ryuuken, though he also remembers, keeps a better rein on his temper this time. Instead, he adopts the calm, steady, unblinking stare Uryuu has come to dread so much.

"Because you can't make a living off it."

**christmas is a bad time for us –eight months later**

Every time the snows come, Uryuu gets down and prays for spring.

It's not a matter of hating the snow or the cold or simply preferring warm weather. Uryuu likes the quiet that comes when the trees are barren and stripped of leaves and the world is blanketed in muffling snow. He likes how suddenly clean the world seems.

His mother died in winter, and in winter his father almost behaves as if he has died as well. Ryuuken is almost unbearable to be around in the darkest days of winter, moody and even closer to being totally silent than before. He alternates between anger and black depression, may not even know he does it; Uryuu often finds himself seeking refuge at his grandfather's house in these months.

On December 27, Uryuu's mother died. And at times, he hates the coming snows for what it does to his father.

**find a safe place, and don't let it go –three months later**

Soken sighs wearily as he gets down on his arthritic knees, and gently shakes Uryuu awake. He's found the child asleep on the floor of his kitchen, using his book bag as a pillow, as the sky begins to be stained wine-violet outside.

"Uryuu?" he asks, bewildered, as the child opens bleary, frankly—and this is not a good sign to Soken—exhausted and, most alarming of all, blankly dull eyes, but doesn't get up, and merely stares up at his grandfather. "How long have you been here?"

"I finished my homework," Uryuu points out defensively.

"I'm sure you did. I told you though," Soken reminds him, trying desperately to be gentle with his increasingly timid grandson, "that if I'm not here when you come in the afternoons, you need to go on home."

Uryuu, who by now has sat up, looks down at the floor, licking his lips. His shoulders weigh down with weary dread.

Soken can only look at his grandson in sadness, put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder, and feel a sickening weight in his stomach when Uryuu flinches away. "You know your father doesn't ever mean to hurt you with his words." He had honestly wanted to avoid putting Uryuu in this position, but there's no avoiding it now, watching the child grow sadder and quieter as he lived each day torn between his father and his grandfather.

Uryuu, of course, doesn't answer.

Groaning slightly, the old man gets to his feet. "I'll have to call your father."

Finally, Uryuu reacts, hopping to his feet and catching Soken's wrist in one hand. "No… Please don't." His voice is horribly small.

Not without sympathy, Soken turns round and stares at him, trying to find any hint of Uryuu's true feelings in his face. He can't. "It's nearly nightfall. He must be worried sick."

Uryuu gazes up at him with miserable, all-too-knowing eyes. "No, he's not."

**all that remains –one year and five months later**

Ryuuken's grip on his shoulder is so tight that it hurts and leaves marks on Uryuu's shoulder later, but for once Uryuu doesn't seem to care. Just his father trying to make his presence known, any way he can. As they move forward in the funeral home, Ryuuken says nothing, but doesn't have to say anything to illustrate how much he wishes he didn't have to be there.

And for once, Uryuu doesn't care what his father thinks.

He is the last Quincy. His father has abandoned that life and his grandfather is dead. He is the last Quincy, and he is eight years old.

Uryuu knows now that he will have to carry on, carry that weight on his shoulders, and carry it by himself. He already feels lead weighing down on him, and it's not his father's hand he's feeling.

He's the last Quincy. And being the last is a lonely feeling.

But it's all Uryuu has now.

**the necessity of genocide –two weeks later**

Resentment has begun growing in him, like a seed taking root.

Resentment at his father, who simply does not care anymore, and more strongly, resentment at the Shinigami, who decided that genocide was the only way to solve a problem two hundred years ago.

Resentment grows in him, against the ones who thought genocide was the only way.

**i think about you all the time, and i don't need the same –five months later**

It's nearly midnight, and Uryuu lies awake often now. The nightmares, which he had when he was younger and had dissipated just slightly over time, have now returned in full force, have since his grandfather died, leaving his heart to pound unbearably when he wakes up, though he (and he is very grateful for this) mostly manages not to cry.

In the bitter watches of the long night, Uryuu often surprises himself by thinking of his mother.

Soken never did tell him anything more of his mother, so Uryuu knows nothing of her but her name (_Sayuri, _he rolls the name over and over again in his mind, almost like a prayer, the only prayer he knows) and that even if he did ask his father, Ryuuken wouldn't say anything.

So Uryuu can only wonder. Wonder if his life would have been any different if his mother had lived, if maybe her still being alive would mean that his father wouldn't have hardened as he had. Wonder if maybe, just maybe, they'd all be a little happier.

There are no answers to these questions.

**a small dose of cyanide –seven months later**

On the first day of the fourth grade, listening to his classmates talk, Uryuu hears that one of them has lost their mother over the summer break.

Uryuu looks over to the boy sitting two rows to his left in the cafeteria, and tips his head and frowns slightly, feeling pity wash over him. Kurosaki Ichigo's mother died two months ago, and he still seems withdrawn and silent and nearly catatonic. He hasn't touched his lunch.

For a moment, Uryuu would like to try to comfort him. He can honestly sympathize with whatever pain Kurosaki is going through, and knows from experience that it's a burden nearly impossible to carry alone.

But he stops. Kurosaki almost certainly has no clue who he is, would look upon a stranger's attempts at comforting to be akin to that of a vulture. In truth, no one knows Uryuu; he's just Ishida, the weird, slightly creepy kid with glasses who never talks (Most of his class is still under the impression that he's a mute, because Uryuu still never talks in class, not even to answer roll call now; he just raises his hand. Most of his classmates just give him a wide berth.). It's not Uryuu's place to try to comfort Kurosaki, when Uryuu doesn't even know him and has never even met his mother.

And Uryuu knows, that if Kurosaki feels anything like he did after his grandfather died, then all the well-meaning attempts at comfort given by people who don't care are about as welcome as a dose of cyanide in the milk cartons.

**don't show your tears –three months later**

Uryuu wishes he had managed not to draw his father into his room with his crying.

This time, the nightmare has proved to be too much. This time, the nightmare was unmistakably about his grandfather. Despite Uryuu's efforts not to, he is crying, sobs like hiccups drilling in his throat.

"Get a hold of yourself." Ryuuken's cold, flat tone makes Uryuu's head snap up. The look his father is giving him is just as frigid as his voice. "If a bad dream is enough to make you break down like this, then I don't see how you expect to survive on your own."

Uryuu is left drained and debilitated by this rough rebuke, but he can't say he's surprised.

**prick of blood, drop away, blood staining on the needle –one month later**

A thin drop of black blood slides down the length of the silver sliver and drips onto Uryuu's pants. He bites his lip, and keeps on, running needle and pale blue thread through the rough cloth. The needle regularly requires cleaning of blood, especially in these early days of Uryuu's sewing career.

He doesn't really enjoy it at all; he's not particularly good at sewing yet, and that's part of it. The days when Uryuu will enjoy sewing will not come for a long time yet.

But when Uryuu holds the needle, he doesn't have to think.

When he holds the needle, Uryuu doesn't have to think about the carnage and doesn't have to swallow down bile in his throat.

When he holds the needle, Uryuu doesn't have to think about the empty spaces in the empty house occupied by empty people.

And when he holds the needle, Uryuu doesn't have to think—can't remember—about how lonely it is when he lies awake at night, chasing elusive sleep through the sky.

**no love is unconditional –nine months later**

Sometimes, Uryuu wonders if his father loves him.

And he decides that he's better off not knowing.

**words hurt far more –one year later**

Ryuuken has never laid a hand on him. He's probably never even contemplated it; Uryuu can give him that much credit. But Ryuuken's never really needed to lay hands to him to hurt him. Words hurt far more.

_Whoever first said "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" ought to be strung up by their ankles._

Ryuuken's words still sting in his ears, as much as the bruises and lacerations on Uryuu's arms from last night's tangle with his first Hollow, as Uryuu walks down the sidewalk towards his middle school, wearing his jacket despite the mild weather to hide his injuries; the only way Uryuu has ever managed to draw attention to himself at school is by wearing bandages and showing cuts and bruises, and he'd prefer not to, if he can help it.

Uryuu had honestly had no idea how his mother had died. The words, delivered with cold anger snapping out at the edge of his father's voice, ring in his skull, echoing and grim.

_He had no right… Why did he have to say it like that?_

Uryuu's not particularly prone to self-pity, or at least tries not to be, but he likes to think that he can be forgiven at the moment.

He stops a moment and fingers at his cheeks numbly when he realizes they're wet. Then, Uryuu wipes the tears away with a viciousness that surprises even himself.

**i wake up to find no peace of mind –one year and eight months later**

Uryuu dreams of his mother for the first and last time the night he moves into his apartment after leaving home.

They're sitting on the porch of a house Uryuu can't recognize and has never been to. She sits beside him, smaller than him, though not by much (Uryuu is smaller than many thirteen-year-old boys), and her dark hair, not quite brushing her shoulder blades, hangs over her face so Uryuu can't see her features or her bright smile in motion.

He gets the impression that she's talking to him, telling him something, but Uryuu can't hear Sayuri's words, which he supposes makes sense since he has no memory of her voice (_But can't my subconscious be a little more creative? You'd think it would be able to at least _try_ to come up with a voice for my mother._), but still finds to be frustrating.

Uryuu gets the feeling—_knows_—that what Sayuri's trying to talk to him about is important, but no matter how hard he strains to hear her, no words filter through the silence.

Uryuu wakes up feeling as though he has been thwarted.

He also wakes up to the sight of walls that are utterly unfamiliar, and it takes Uryuu a moment to remember that this is home now.

Wearily, he pulls himself out of the bed whose mattress he's still getting used to. Uryuu presses open the door of his bedroom, and steps out into the abbreviated hall that barely takes two steps to lead into the kitchen/living room area.

Uryuu pulls open the heavy curtains of his apartment slightly, staring out into the night. Inky midnight greets his eyes, the world glittering with wet—it has been raining. A parking lot, a street beyond, office buildings, a grocery store. A lone car drives by, singing forlornly into the darkness.

This is Uryuu's reality now, he reminds himself.

He walks alone.

He has to, if he ever wants to survive.

**face the sun for the first time –three years and two months later**

Three years later, many things have changed in Uryuu's life. He's somewhat happy, genuinely happy, for the first time in his life, and he'd be crazy if he tried to deny, at least to himself, that it's a good, at times even euphoric feeling.

Okay, maybe not happy, so much as content. Finding legitimate companionship with others, not unhealthy, harmful relationships, is still new to Uryuu, who only ever had a hint of that with his grandfather.

For the first time, he's not alone. For the first time, he doesn't _have_ to be alone.

It is morning, or close to it. The clock reads five forty-five, the start of a new day. Outside, there is bright crimson and scarlet light starting to sear over the horizon, making their voices heard.

Drawing in a deep breath, Uryuu opens the curtains hanging over the window of his apartment, and faces the dawning sun for the first time.


End file.
